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Monthly Archives: March 2014
Genocide Without Reflection: The Noah Movie Is Horrible
I saw the Noah movie. It’s bad. Really, really bad. It’s such a comedown from director Darren Aronovsky’s previous film, The Black Swan, which was really, really good. Where to start with Noah? How about with the gender stereotyping and racism? The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, creationism, evolution, film, genocide, God, movies, Noah
3 Comments
Creationists Win Another Pyrrhic Victory Over Evolution
When I learned that, in South Carolina, two Republican young earth creationists recently blocked the adoption of the woolly mammoth as the state’s official fossil (all but seven states have one) because they don’t want people reminded of evolution, I thought … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, atheism, creationism, evolution, fundamentalism, God, Jesus, science, South Carolina
2 Comments
Peter Ward Can’t Sleep at Night
The short reason: __________ The longer explanation (at YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRUggIb-NI __________ In Ward’s view, the two most urgent problems surrounding human caused climate change are the following: Mass extinction. When the poles heat up (as has happened in other periods … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged climate change, environment, global warming, life, oceans, peter ward, science, sea level
3 Comments
Alan Sokal on Faith
Physicist Alan Sokal, the famed skewer of postmodernism, in an article at Massimo Pigliucci’s Scientia Salon, gives faith a well deserved towel snap: “Faith” is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. “Faith” … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, critical thinking, faith, God, Islam, reason, religion
6 Comments
What is Information? A Three Word Definition
The three word definition. The physicist Brian Greene, in his book The Hidden Reality (Knopf 2011), gives the best definition of information I’ve ever encountered: So, you start to ponder. What actually is information, and what does it do? Your … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, critical thinking, david hume, entropy, God, information, philosophy, science, truth
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Wikipedia Won’t Let People Post Woo On Wikipedia, And That Makes Woo Promoters Upset
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, responds to alternative medicine woo pushers seeking easier criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia articles:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged alternative medicine, critical thinking, medicine, pseudoscience, science, Wikipedia
5 Comments
Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Get a Towel Snap
From Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic: At the conclusion of his poems about the rescue of the Ghent Altarpiece [from a salt mine after WWII], Kirstein wrote: “How marble molds itself into flesh, paint kindles gold in shafts / Makes me witness salvation … Continue reading
Fred Phelps (1929-2014): The Logician Made Flesh
He’s dead, but who was Fred Phelps, really? He was a logician; a logician made flesh; the reductio ad absurdum of the anti-gay rights movement. God hates fags. It’s right there in the Bible. Thus he believed, thus he preached, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, critical thinking, gay, gay marriage, gay rights, God, psychology, religion
1 Comment
Cosmic Inflation? John Horgan Taps the Brakes
Science writer John Horgan (who is not a physicist) is intrigued by the recent evidence for the theory of cosmic inflation, but is also holding out for some additional confirmation, support, and explanation before he buys what some prominent physicists, … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, Big Bang, cosmic inflation, critical thinking, God, inflation, multiverse, physics, science
13 Comments
Does the Recent Discovery of Cosmic Inflation Bolster the Multiverse Hypothesis?
Apparently it does, and that considerably. This comes via Space.com: The new research also lends credence to the idea of a multiverse. This theory posits that, when the universe grew exponentially in the first tiny fraction of a second after the … Continue reading
Bill Maher on Noah’s Ark and the New Noah’s Ark Movie
The subject is Noah’s ark and the new Noah’s ark movie. Bill Maher engaging in some sustained and gleeful–and very, very funny–blasphemy. (That is, if God and biblical literalists can take a joke.)
The Cosmic Gun Smokes
Imagine positing a theory about the origin of the cosmos, then predicting something odd and otherwise implausible that one would find if the theory were true. Then imagine finding it. That’s what happened. This is via USA TODAY and The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, atheism, Big Bang, God, ontological mystery, science
14 Comments
What Hillary Will Win In 2016
The Supreme Court. A reader at Andrew Sullivan’s blog makes the point concisely: A president Clinton will have […] a very gray Supreme Court (FOUR octogenarians in her first term). Think about what that means for all those Voting Rights Act cases … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Democrats, GOP, Hillary, hillary clinton, Obama, Politics, Republicans
4 Comments
Aquinas and Dante On Homosexuality
Louis Crompton. Homosexuality and History (Harvard 2003), by Louis Crompton, is by far the best general history of homosexuality yet written, and in his chapter on the medieval world, he has a fascinating discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s and Dante’s treatment of … Continue reading
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Tagged aquinas, Catholicism, dante, equality, gay, gay marriage, homosexuality, natural law, The Three Graces
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Who Is Your Neighbor?
Sharing with a stranger–one of the better angels of our nature–is on display in this YouTube: __________ The video is moving, but why is it moving? Why don’t we have similar responses, say, to adult alcoholics who are homeless, cold, … Continue reading
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Tagged ahimsa, Buddha, gandhi, God, Jesus, love, nonkilling, nonviolence, vegetarianism
8 Comments
By What Criteria Should One Evaluate Shakespeare?
In the Preface to his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765), the literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) had some opinions about what makes Shakespeare so good. Here they are. See if you agree (and notice how many of them are … Continue reading
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Tagged criteria, critical thinking, drama, evaluation, literature, plays, samuel johnson, Shakespeare
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God’s Hiddenness
This video explains it: ___________ As the above video nicely, if ironically, illustrates, the hiddenness of God is a serious problem. And academic books have been written on the issue. One is titled Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (edited by Daniel … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, critical thinking, God, philosophy, psychology, religion, UFOs
17 Comments
Are Fussy Egg Handlers Rational?
Are you a fussy egg handler, quickly washing your hands after touching raw eggs and never, never licking batter from a spoon or bowl if a raw egg has been mixed with it (for fear of salmonella)? In terms of … Continue reading
13.7 Billion Years Divided By 365: 40 Million Years Is A Day; A Day, 40 Million Years
In the debut episode of the new Cosmos series, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hand Stuever of The Washington Post describes the football field sized cosmological calendar that Tyson uses to put our 13.7 billion-year-old big bang universe into time … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Big Bang, carl sagan, cosmology, evolution, life, science, space, time
1 Comment
